Tuesday, 2 February 2010

WARNING:
This is gonna be bad news for French.
In their dreams, in fact, this is supposed to be a well known "French dish".
The cruel (and extremely funny) truth is that also this recipe was brought from Italy, to be precise from Tuscany, and to be even more precise, from that incredible woman that was Caterina de' Medici.

Sounds like a déjà vu... n'est-ce pas?

The poor girl was getting really really bored so she decided to...

play in the kitchen with some of her cooks!
She took a canard (she took one already cleaned and with no fat)

She put a bit of salt inside (fleur de sel was not fashionable yet, so it was just a normal salt), then she melt 50gr of butter in a pot (after all there was plenty of butter everyfuckingwhere, nobody would even noticed it was missing: it was France!)
An onion was there, so she decided to cut it in a lot of tiny parts, then she added them in the pot.
She thought there was not enough "liquid" so she added also a little glass of olive oil (oh yes, it was already the Extra Vergine d'Oliva!)
When the onion was sauted, she added the canard, browning each side of it. She added also a bit of black pepper.

After that, she poured in the pot a glass of white wine and some water. She also thought "Next time I will add some bouillon, instead of the simple water"

She wasn't really satisfied: she wanted to add half of a little glass of Grand Marnier instead of the white wine, cause Grand Marnier is perfect in this dish, but she should have waited 300 years to get i,t and she was starting to get really hungry!

Meanwhile, while she was waiting for the canard to be cooked, she decided to peel an orange (back then it was still safe eating the peel of an orange, no poison there *poison was in fact used just to get rid of husbands and lovers* it was a good time: no need of getting crazy looking for fucking bio fruit)

While she was peeling the 3 oranges, she decided to cut the peel in little stripes (just for fun) but then she heard a noise that scared her, and when she looked at her hands...ooops! The peels were already falling down in a little pot where some water and sugar were boiling.
Dunno why somebody was doing the caramel in that moment, but she thought it wasn't a bad idea using those caramelized orange peels for the canard.
So, she put them in a little white porcelaine dish with the intention to use them later.

The canard was a long thing to cook, she thought that 45-60 minutes with the low fire could have been enough, but sometimes it can takes even 2 hours!
Was she cooking a big beast maybe?

While she was thinking of getting a manicure the day after, she noticed there were 3 nacked oranges in the kitchen, so she decided to make an orange juice from them.
Nobody wanted to drink it, so she poured a bit of that juice in the pot, and save the rest for later.

When the canard was almost cooked, she added also the rest of the orange juice, mixing it to the "juice" that the canard produced while cooking.
She was really pleased noticing that the sauce looked incredibly yummie...

So, she completed the dish covering the canard with its hot sauce, and with the caramelized pieces of orange as a decoration.
Done that, she electrocuted the cooks of le Palais Royale with a glance, removed her royal apron, and roared:

Jocking apart, we (Italians and French) may fight for the paternity of this or that recipe, and some of them for sure were born with the collaboration of both. What is really true is that we both have a great kitchen and good quality food!